Google Speed Update: Page speed will become a ranking factor in mobile search

Google have announced on 17th January 2018 a change in how it will rank websites for mobile searches. It will take page speed into consideration as one of the ranking factors which, Google refers to as “Speed Update” this will come into effect in July 2018. This gives you time to prepare your webpages and this is something that Google’s been doing on desktop for a while now but now it’s officially, making its way on to mobile results.

Back in 2010, Google said that page speed was a ranking factor but it “was focused on desktop searches” only.

Google’s Zhiheng Wang and Doantam Phan wrote:

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

In July 2018, it will look at how fast your mobile pages are and use that as a ranking factor in a mobile search. After it has been promising to look at mobile page speed for years Google has finally confirmed it’s finally coming.

These sort of mobile-focused changes to Google search will soon happen more, given that the majority of Google users today search the web via mobile devices, like smartphones. In 2015 mobile searches surpassed desktop searches, mobile searches have continued to grow in the years.

These figures mean that mobile has been more important than desktop for several years now, and it’ time for the search index itself to reflect that.

In the post Google points to several resources to Lighthouse, an automated tool for auditing site performance and other web quality metrics; and PageSpeed Insights, which shows how well a page performs